“It’s so funny. We walk by the
still every day, shake our heads, and say, ‘The damned thing actually works!’”

Shawn Measel, one of the three
proprietors of Fairborn’s Flat Rock Distillery, was breaking down the origin of
various pieces and parts of Flat Rock’s homebuilt distiller.

“These parts were duct work
from a machine built in Stuttgart, Germany. Those were water pipes from a
factory. Those were steam pipes.”

Brad Measel, Shawn’s older
brother, chimed in, “Our still’s not one of the big, beautiful copper stills
like the one they’re putting in at Party Source [aka NewRiff Distillery in Bellevue, KY]. Those are
like $500,000. Ours comes from leftover pieces and parts from our old job
sites.”

The Measel brothers, along
with their former office manager, James Bagford, turned a floorful of
repurposed rigging equipment into Flat Rock’s incubator for StillWrights, their
now-available line of distilled spirits. The StillWrights lineup includes a
straight bourbon, flavored and unflavored moonshines, and – soon – silver,
spiced, and bourbon barrel-aged rums.

Four of StillWrights’
moonshines recently took awards in the 2014 American Distilling Institute competition for independently produced
spirits. Their key lime pie moonshine took gold and was named “Best in Class.”

Less than a decade ago, however,
rather than winning medals, the three were hauling metal.

From Millwright to Stillwright

“Shawn and I are both millwrights,”
said Brad. “My father was a millwright. My grandfather was a millwright.”

“Millwrights are industrial
machinery movers,” explained Shawn, patiently, after I demonstrated my lack of
knowledge about what a millwright was. “The origin is back in windmills, grist
mills, sawmills. If you wanted one built, a millwright got everything in place
and assembled the machinery. [Millwrights] evolved into what they are today
during the Industrial Revolution. Today, say you’re putting together a tool and
die shop – we’re the ones who will set up your punch press. We make sure
factory lines run the way they should so the workers can do their thing.”

Shawn and Brad’s father, Don
Measel, opened Pyramid Riggers in the early 1980’s. Shawn, Brad, and their
other two brothers worked there. It’s a tense business, they said. Millwrights’
busy seasons are during factory shutdowns – 4th of July,
Thanksgiving, Christmas breaks, and the like – and they are required to hit
very strict deadlines. Pyramid generally kept a core staff of 20-25 people on
payroll, but that number would swell to 75 at peak times.

“When the [heavy industry]
started leaving Dayton…we had a lot of work for a few years – ‘05, ‘06, ‘07 –
as plants were moving out of town. But we could see our niche going away, so we
knew we had to come up with something else. We started to do some research on
what works well in an economic downturn and alcohol production just kept coming
up.”

“Landscaping also came up as
recession resistant,” added Shawn, “but that was just too much work! So we
started studying the microdistillery business. We wanted something we were
passionate about that we could do with a minimum of employees and with less
stress.”

As the plan emerged for the
distillery, named for the family farm near Medway, they brought in their
cousin, James Bagford, who worked at Pyramid as the office manager and
compliance expert. “James was really good with regulations, and when you start
distilling, there are all sorts of issues with the state and federal
government. We needed James, because he’s good at that!”

James added, “It’s really
different from homebrewing and home winemaking. With those, you go to the
store, pick up a kit, and you’re good to go. You can have decades of practice
before you open up a larger winemaking operation, but with distilling, you
can’t do that. Legally, you can’t even practice, so you have to make sure you
have everything in line before you start.”

Setting up the line

“As we were closing down the
rigging business…we just kept our eyes open as we were going through our
projects,” said Brad. “If there were ever any stainless steel or copper
pipework or anything we thought might work, we just kept it! We laid out a
whole building floor of stuff over a year.”

Brad Measel shows off the top
of Flat Rock's homemade still.

Shawn added, “We sketched it
all out on paper and did a couple of designs. We’d start in and go, ‘Hey! We’ve
got a new piece of pipe. Could we use this?’ and we’d make a few changes.” They
first built an “experimental” 27 gallon still, which led to the construction of
their 300 gallon main still, based on a design adapted from one they saw
Louisville’s Vendome Copper & Brass Works.

On most distillery tours,
guides spend a great deal of time talking about how the design and shape of a still
yields a unique flavor. When I asked how that applied to the unconventional
design of the Flat Rock still, Shawn laughed, noting that physics is much more
important than aesthetics. “That whole mystique, the shape and all that -- it’s
a lot of P.T. Barnum, “’Hey! Watch this hand!’ while my other hand is doing
something else” stuff. I mean, if you dropped half a million on a still, you
gotta say, ‘Our stuff is better because our still is shaped like an onion.’”

As they gathered the pieces
for their operation and gradually converted their buildings from manufacturing
to distilling, the Flat Rock team became students of the technical process from
grain to barrel. “We’re largely self-taught,” said Brad, “I tell you, on the
Internet, man, you can get on there and learn just about anything you want.”

In addition to powerful
Google-Fu skills, they relied on their millwright experience to create an
efficient system for production in quantity. “Shawn and I had been in so many
industrial plants – auto plants, the Lima army tank plant, big bakeries – we’ve
seen a lot of production, so we could say, ‘The flow should go like this, and
we need racks for this, and these things should go here.’ We wanted to make it
as easy on ourselves as we could.”

They also believe the
attention to detail required in their millwright work translated neatly to
distilling. With the batch size they produce, they’re able to keep tabs on
everything from how “happy” the fermenting yeast is to precisely maintaining
the proper temperatures during the mashing and distilling processes, since
problems at any stage can create impurities in the final product.

“The big distilleries can’t do
that in a million-gallon run,” mused Shawn. “Everything goes into their barrels
– guts, feathers, and all. That’s why a lot of them age their whiskey for so
long – they’ve got to mellow out those defects – aldehydes and acetones and
other nasty stuff. We don’t have that problem.

“And our still kinda talks to
us. In the still there’s a copper dome. As the vapor hits the dome and
condenses, boils, and recondenses, it jiggles. And when we hear that thing
rattling away like a jazz drummer going to town on a high hat, it’s letting us
know that we need to really keep an eye on the temperature,” Shawn added,
throwing in sound effects and air drums for good measure.

Throwing the switch

Flat Rock fired up the still for
the first time in 2010. They sunk the savings from building the still into the
purchase of barrels to age their final product. They originally planned to call
their spirits “Flat Rock,” but a trademark dispute with a Canadian winery led
to the coining of “StillWrights.”

“Our first plan was to make
our bourbon, because we knew that had to age,” explained Brad. “Then we wanted
to make our ‘Chateau Cash Flow,’ something we could get on the shelves and make
money with. We thought that would be rum, but we struggled to come up with a
rum that we liked…We decided to look for something else, and we tried making
moonshine. We were on the second batch and we were like, ‘Wow. We should have
done this earlier!’”

Moonshine, the spirit they describe
as “American as Revolution, Apple Pie, and Badassery,” does not have a precise
legal definition. It’s classified by the federal government, according to
James, as a “distilled spirit specialty,” meaning there are no particular criteria
for production and aging, which is different than rum, bourbon, and other
distillates, which have very specific guidelines. StillWrights unflavored
moonshine clocks in at 104.7 proof, while their flavored versions are 70 proof.

Putting the barrels down. (photo courtesy Dayton City Paper)

The bourbon caused some real
trepidation for the team. “We’re six months in, and I start worrying,” Brad
recalled, “What if this stuff isn’t any good? There’s our family business down
the tubes. So we called in a consultant who worked with some big distilleries
and he said that we might make a couple of minor tweaks to the process, but we
were spot on.” Shawn excitedly interjected, “He told us that our major problem
was that we weren’t making enough whiskey!”

The first batch of
StillWrights 90 proof bourbon is aged in 15 gallon casks for two years. When
that bourbon is all out of barrel, they’ll empty their 25 gallon barrels, which
will have been aged for three. Eventually, they’ll move on to their four-year
53 gallon barrels, which will be their standard moving forward. Some of the
used barrels are being used to age their rums, which should be released in July
and August.

StillWrights’ unique bottle
design, which neatly complements their “Coiled S” logo, has an international
flavor. A French company has a design competition every year for college
seniors and they mass produce the winning bottle. Flat Rock’s design company
happened upon the bottle just as it was released, immediately saw the
connection, and snapped it up.

The Goods

After giving me a tour of the
facility, the Flat Rock team took me to their recently-completed tasting room
for a sampling. Brad served as bartender, deftly pouring half-ounce tastes, his
right forearm wrapped in a tattoo of tally marks – 31 of them, one for each
year he’s been married. (“He initially did Roman numerals,” cracked Shawn, “He
didn’t think it through.”)

The unflavored moonshine is
dangerously easy to drink. It has a very even corn flavor with very little
afterburn. The flavored moonshines were unique to my palate. I’m used to
flavored liquors having one-note tastes, but these, produced in conjunction
with Mother Murphy’s flavoring company, had multiple layers of flavor. The
“Best in Show” key lime had complex flavors of graham cracker and meringue
alongside the tart lime. The “peach cobbler” had savory notes of toasted oat to
go along with the peach. The apple pie tasted like…well…apple pie. They also
feature a margarita and a cinnamon version.

The bourbon is quite
enjoyable. It has an undertone of a scotch-like peat, and a little splash of
water brings out considerable floral and vanilla notes to go along with a backbone of newly harvested grain. The flavors are all
very distinct and, overall, it’s a very clean bourbon, with some maple syrup, corn, and cognac flavors at the end.

They say that their lineup
will change as the market changes. “Moonshines are a hit right now,” Brad said,
“but they might end up as a fad. We want to be agile enough to make whatever’s
hot. But there will always be demand for rum and bourbon.” They indicated that
they might eventually try branching into gin, which Shawn enjoys. “When I drink
gin, my face hurts from smiling so much.”

“Our two brothers kind of
think we’re crazy,” said Brad, pouring a little more bourbon for us as we
watched a storm roll in. “Dad passed in ’07. I hope he’d be proud of us. Give
us a couple of years. When we’re making some money, I know he’ll be proud of us.
Until then, he’d be like “Get your ass movin’!”

StillWrights bourbon retails for $35 per bottle; the moonshines for
$25. StillWrights can be purchased at the distillery’s tasting room -- as well
as Arrow Wine South, Belmont Party Supply, Air City Wine, the Lebanon Kroger
and Vandalia Carryout.

Flat Rock Distillery is located at 5380 Intrastate Drive, Fairborn.
Tours, which include tastings of all their products, are $10 and can be
arranged at http://flatrockspirits.com/product/distillery-tour/ -- by calling (937) 879-4447, or by emailing
tours@flatrockspirits.com.

About Me

Sommelier for the Common Man. The Man who Cooks. A regular guy with
fifteen bucks worth of savoir faire and a nose for tasty food and wine.
Learn about wine at The Naked Vine. Follow my culinary adventures at The Man Who Cooks. Email me at thenakedvine @ gmail.com